¡VIVA!

Description

This compelling collection of inspiring case studies from community arts projects in five countries will inform and inspire students, artists, and activists. ¡VIVA! is the product of a five-year transnational research project that integrates place, politics, passion, and praxis. Framed by postcolonial theories of decolonization, the pedagogy of the oppressed articulated by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, and the burgeoning field of community arts, this collection not only analyzes the dynamic integration of the critical and the creative in social justice movements, it embodies such a praxis. Learn from Central America: Kuna children's art workshops, a community television station in Nicaragua, a cultural marketplace in Guadalajara, Mexico, community mural production in Chiapas; and from North America: arts education in Los Angeles inner-city schools, theater probing ancestral memory, community plays with over one hundred participants, and training programs for young artists in Canada. These practices offer critical hope for movements hungry for new ways of knowing and expressing histories, identities, and aspirations, as well as mobilizing communities for social transformation.

Beautifully illustrated with more than one hundred color photographs, the book also includes a DVD with videos that bring the projects to life.
Preface. Who, Why and How VIVA?

Acknowledgments

Introduction. Rooted in Place, Politics, Passion, and Praxis: Decolonization, Popular Education, Community Arts and Participatory Action Research

PART I. RECOVERING CULTURAL HISTORIES: From Indigenous to Diasporic Contexts

Introduction

1. Planting Good Seeds: The Kuna Children’s Art Workshops
Jesús Alemancia (CEASPA, Kuna Yala, Panama)

2. The Lost Body: Recovering Memory—A Personal Legacy
Diane Roberts (Personal Legacy Project, Vancouver, Canada)

PART II. TRANSFORMING URBAN SPACES: From PostColonial Neighborhoods to Public Squares

Introduction

3. Out of the Tunnel There Came Tea: Jumblies Theatre’s Bridge of One Hair Project
Ruth Howard (Jumblies Theatre, Toronto, Canada)

4. Telling Our Stories: Training Artists to Engage with Communities
Christine McKenzie (Catalyst Center, Toronto, Canada)

5. A Melting Pot Where Lives Converge: Tianguis Cultural de Guadalajara
Leonardo David de Anda Gonzalez and Sergio Eduardo Martínez Mayoral (Tianguis Cultural and IMDEC, Guadalajara, Mexico)

6. Painting by Listening: Participatory Community Mural Production
Sergio G. Valdez Ruvalcaba (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City, Mexico)

7. Connecting the Dots: Linking Schools and Universities Through the Arts
Amy Shimson-Santo (UCLArtsBridge, Los Angeles, USA)

8. With Our Images, Voices and Cultures Bilwivision: A Community Television Channel
Margarita Antonio and Reyna Armida Duarte (URACCAN, Bilwi, Nicaragua)

Epilogue. Critical Hope

Notes
Glossary
About the Editor, Contributors, and Videographers
VIVA! Project Partners’ Contacts
Photo and Drawing Credits
VIVA! Community Arts and Popular Education in the Americas: Nine Videos (on accompanying DVD)
Index

Sujets

• Photographie
• Techniques photographiques
• Technique photographique
• Film
• Caribbean
• Latin America
• Visual culture
• Película fotográfica
• Latin American

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 20 novembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781438437682
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

SUNY SERIES, PRAXIS: THEORY IN ACTION
Nancy A. Naples, editor

                      
S TATE U NIVERSITY OF N EW Y ORK P RESS and B ETWEEN THE L INES

¡VIVA!
Community Arts and Popular Education in the Americas

Deborah Barndt, editor With VIVA! Project Partners

Dedicated to Raúl Leis (1947-2011)
VIVA partner and editor
Renowned writer, social movement leader and popular educator of the Americas
Viva Raúl Leis, Viva!
Published by STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, ALBANY
© 2011 State University of New York
All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production and book design, Laurie Searl Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
¡VIVA!: community arts and popular education in the Americas / edited by Deborah Barndt; with VIVA! Project Partners.
p. cm. — (SUNY series, Praxis: theory in action)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3766-8 (pbk.: alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-3767-5 (hardcover: alk. paper)
1. Community arts projects—Western Hemisphere. 2. Arts in education—Western Hemisphere. I. Barndt, Deborah. II. Title: Community arts and popular education in the Americas.
NX180.A77V58 2011
700.1'03097–dc22                                                                                                                     2011003194
Published in Canada by BETWEEN THE LINES
401 Richmond Street West, Studio 277, Toronto, Ontario M5V 3A8, Canada 1-800-718-7201 www.btlbooks.com
In Canada no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of Between the Lines, or Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca .
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
¡VIVA!: community arts and popular education in the Americas / Deborah
Barndt, editor.
Accompanied by DVD.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-926662-51-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Community arts projects—America.
2. Arts in education—America. I. Barndt, Deborah
NX180.A77V59 2011           700.1'03097           C2011-902938-3
Between the Lines gratefully acknowledges assistance for its publishing activities from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program and through the Ontario Book Initiative, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PREFACE
Who, Why, and How VIVA?
After listening to the stories of the VIVA projects, I hope you will say to yourself: “I am not alone.” There is a very strong bond, a collective consciousness; there's someone who thinks like I do in Canada, in Panama, so I am not alone.
—VIVA! Partner Sergio Eduardo (Lalo) Martínez Mayoral, Guadalajara, Mexico
T his book has been created by and for people who are seeking a more just and sustainable world, who want to integrate education and art into community work, who believe that such synergy can foster greater passion for and deeper commitment to movements for social and environmental justice. It offers stories and experiences from the Global North and Global South that both support and challenge this work, that help build a bond between us as we work in our different communities to unveil and transform power. Hopefully it will make you, the reader—whether you are a student, educator, artist, activist, community worker, or engaged citizen—feel that, like Lalo, you are not alone.
This is the story of the VIVA! project, a transnational exchange that explores stories in their deepest sense. As Cherokee scholar/storyteller Thomas King suggests, “Stories are all that we are; we can't understand ourselves or the world around us without telling a story.” 1 Our project questions who tells stories, about what and for whom, when and where, why and how , and in what form . Stories of “struggle and hope,” in the words of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. 2 Within these pages are the stories of eight community arts projects in five countries; and woven around them, the story of how the VIVA! project created a space for these stories to be shared and probed. How we connected across borders, inspiring and challenging ourselves, each other, and our community organizations, educational institutions, and social movements.

Who is VIVA?
The VIVA! project is a transnational 3 exchange and collaborative research project with eight partners: NGOs and universities in Panama, Nicaragua, Mexico, the United States, and Canada. The NGO partners in Mexico and Central America are the key popular education centers in their respective countries, with more than four decades of engagement in local, regional, and transnational social movements: the Mexican Institute for Community Development (IMDEC) in Guadalajara and the Panamanian Social Education and Action Center (CEASPA). In Canada, the community partners include the Catalyst Centre, Jumblies Theatre, and the Personal Legacy project. The university partnerships are built on institutional links and with scholars/artists/activists in the Intercultural Communications Institute of URACCAN University in Nicaragua, in the Social Communications Department of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City, in the Artsbridge program of the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture in Los Angeles, and in York University's Faculty of Environmental Studies and its Community Arts Practice Program (a joint certificate program of the Faculties of Environmental Studies and Fine Arts).

The projects examined here challenge conventional notions of art as elitist, individual, market driven, or focused solely on form. Whether with Kuna children in Panama recovering cultural and ecological values through traditional music and dances or Somali women sewing and singing in a Toronto community center, these initiatives promote the integration of art in its infinite cultural forms into daily rituals, community building, and movements for social change. They uncover hidden stories and offer other ways of telling stories, to counter the official stories fed us by mass media and dominant culture.

A trajinera or decorated gondola on the canals of Xochimilco, Mexico

Grafitti protesting the massacre in Atenco, Chiapas, Mexico

Spiral symbol of VIVA! project

Why VIVA?
“Viva!” is a call to memory and to action; it offers a thread between the past and the future. In Spanish it literally means “Long live!” Rooted in Latin American struggles, the cry often recalls past leaders or martyrs and movements while inspiring future collective action. It reminds us that we are part of a longer historical process. “Viva!” is understood in both Spanish and English, reflecting the cross-fertilization of activists in the South and the North. It connotes the fullness of life that is nurtured by cultural action and creative artistic practices in communities. It signals critical hope.
In December of 2006, some of our partners in the VIVA! project were together at a Zapatista gathering of Indigenous communities in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, organized to show solidarity with the victims of state violence in recent conflicts in Atenco and Oaxaca. 4 As we joined the crowds in shouting, “Viva the victims of Atenco—Viva!” and “Viva the free media—Viva!,” the name of our project took on a much more profound and serious connotation; in contexts where peoples' land and livelihood, identity and dignity are under attack, “Viva!” is a cry of life-and-death struggles.
In our cross-border exchange of popular educators and community artists, we came to recognize that this work is more risky in some places than in others. As a Mexican youth activist emphasized: “The difficult situation in Mexico where there is now institutionalized repression, means that people doing alternative media, art, community work, and university-based protests are being persecuted.” Some of our partners, for example, have been imprisoned for facilitating community murals or autonomous media. This makes the VIVA! project even more important as a space for critique and solidarity.

How VIVA? Spiraling through Time and Space
The spiral, reflected in the conch shell and snail shell, 5 emerged as a symbol of the VIVA! project after our first year of collaboration. It counters the idea of history as a straight line always moving upward toward some Western notion of progress. It also reflects the dynamic movement of projects and of the exchange among projects, becoming more grounded in local struggles while also reaching out to connect through transnational alliances.
While this book focuses on eight local projects, those projects have been fed by the gatherings that brought us together over years of collaboration. Since April 2003, we have had four exchanges—first in Toronto, Canada, to conceive the project (2003) and to launch it (2004), then in Achiote, Panama (2005), to share and systematize our local projects, and finally, in Chiapas, Mexico (2006), to deepen our collective analysis and consolidate our collective products—a website, book, and videos. Each year we expanded our gatherings to include young participants from the local projects of VIVA! partners.
While we began with one framework—the exploration of creative tensions of community arts and popular education—new questions and frames emerged as we probed our own and each others' practices. This collective theorizing resulted in a spiral-model understanding of our process as well as a decolonizin